December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Noise] was Re: Giving 6 year old kids Uzi's
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 5:14 PM -0700 7/22/96, Ernest Hua wrote: >>Or the way many blacks were lynched (physically and socially) in the South. >>Or the way many asians were segregated. Or the way many ethnic groups >>fought each other in inner cities. >> >>These are cultural relics of the good ol' days I simply can do without. Few armed blacks were lynched. Like--none. In any case, posession of machined metal is in no way comparable to lynching. Massed armed attacks on people simply because they are alleged to have possessed machined pieces of metal the size and shape of fifty-cent pieces (the reason for the BATF attack on the religious community outside of Waco) *is* comparable to lynching. DCF

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Re: NSA Lawyers Believe ITARs Would be Overturned if Tested in Court (fwd)
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My arms trafficker page has been up since April 26th. We have 838 arms traffickers and a public file with a list of 360 "known arms traffickers". It was mentioned on CNN. So far, nobody from the NSA or anywhere else has complained. I am sure if this went to court they would loose. They have to claim that clicking a mouse button on a web form so that 3 lines of text go back to where they just came from, makes someone a criminal. "May it please the court, the charge against these 838 criminal clickers is international arms-trafficking." In a country where a double murderer can walk? I am sure they realize this, which is why I feel it is safe for me to do this (also I believe that EFF etc would so love to have my case as a test case that they would pay my legal bills). -- Vince Cate http://online.offshore.com.ai/arms-trafficker/ http://online.offshore.com.ai/publicity/cnn.html

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Re: Bare fibers
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:30 AM 7/23/96 -0500, Douglas R. Floyd wrote: >> >> * Carbons sent to: In: jimbell(a)pacifier.com >> >> -=> Quoting In:jimbell@pacifier.com to Harka <=- >> >> In> The fiber is usually coated with a very thin layer of clear plastic to >> In> protect against moisture and abrasion, and the diameter is around 0.5 >> In> to 1.0 millimeters in diameter. >> >> >> Doesn't that make it vulnerable (detectable) to Tempest attacks? > >Not really sure how. I have had heard of ways to tap a fibre optic link >noninvasively, but its not related to Van Eck or anything like that. You could break the fiber and add a repeater (if you know enough about the light protocol). Plastic fiber can be cut with a pocket knife, glass requires a machine which will make a square cut and polish the end. Those machines are not yet cheap. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Cave ab homine unius lebri | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | [Beware the man of one | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | book] - Anonymous Latin | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Digital Watermarks for copy protection in recent Billbo
by Alex F 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Sniffers aren't much effort, and if I sniff your tagged purchases and > put them out over the net anonymously, they are traced to you. Actually I was thinking more along the lines of physically stealing, but if someone sniffed an electronic transfer of a record then the laws would become even more useless as far as enforcement goes. > Probably, but the Billboard article discussed using CC numbers as an > ID in the online watermarked transactions. Doesn't mean they were > correct, of course. Considering that their sources are probably more reliable (even though less knowledgable), and considering the idiocy of such an idea, I would risk saying that they are right :) > AFAIK, most "bootlegging" is of unreleased concerts or out-takes. > Digital watermarks would be of little use. There are solutions to this that work. 1) The Greatful Dead approach - let everyone bootleg live shows. Who cares? 2) The Frank Zappa Approach - take the bootlegged copies, use better equipment, and possibly your own soundboard recordings of the same show, and put them out yourself. Since you are capable of putting out a better product sonically, then beat them at their own game ("Beat the Boots") Alex F =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Alex F alexf(a)iss.net Marketing Specialist Internet Security Systems =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Re: Netscape
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 16:07 7/23/96, Tom Weinstein wrote: >The Deviant wrote: >> >>> You should only break rules of style if you can | Tom Weinstein >>> coherently explain what you gain by so doing. | tomw(a)netscape.com >> >> Style is standing up for what you beleive in. Netscape obviously has >> none, or they would be activly fighting the ITAR. > >Anyone who believes that Netscape is not actively fighting ITAR is a >fool. Amen. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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Cracking DES or building a DES cracking machine?
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hm, If we are talking about convincing 100,000 people to donate a lot of their CPU time, would not it be possible to convince the same 100,000 people to donate $10 each and build a $1,000,000 DES cracking machine? Then we can crack DES keys for a certain sum per key, without asking any unnecessary questions. Profits can be donated to purchasing AK-47's for poor preschool children or some similar charitable project. - Igor.

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Schelling Points, Rights, and Game Theory--Part I
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Part I I thought I'd write a brief piece on a very interesting angle on "rights," especially given the discussion recently about rights of privacy, children's rights, parent's rights, the role of schools, gun rights, and so on. This also shows the role of game theory, imperfect as it is. (I mention "imperfect" because some have mentioned that game theory does not explain things perfectly...of course not.) Here's a simple example of what a Schelling point is: Alice and Bob decide to meet on Friday in the Washington, D.C. area. They forget to say when and where. Is it hopeless? Can they find each other? Given the millions of places they could be, and the hundreds or more of time-slices to consider, e.g. "10:23 a.m., 345 Crestwood Drive, Arlington," how could they ever meet? Well, there are certain "mutually more probable" times and locations. Absent any time specification, "noon" is what each will expect the other to also think of. (Followed perhaps by 6 p.m., and other on-the-hour times.) And absent any location specification, there's a short list of likely places: NSA headquarters (after all, Alice and Bob are well-known there), in front of the White House, at the base of the Washington Monument, at the entrance to the Air and Space Museum, on the steps of the Supreme Court, etc. I'd say they have about a 10% chance of finding each other, absent any prearrangement. (In smaller cities, the probabilities are even higher, as the central plaza is a major Schelling point for such encounters.) The game theorist Richard Schelling developed this notion, circa about 1960. There are analyses based on "algorithmic information theory," a la Chaitin and Kolmogorov, which I find appealing, to wit: a Schelling point has a shorter "description" in terms of mutually-known building blocks than non-Schelling points. Thus, "noon in front of the White House" has a shorter description, or is more "compressible," than is "10:23 a.m., 345 Crestwood Drive, Arlington." (Don't think in terms of just ASCII characters, but in terms of readily recallable building blocks.) How does this relate to rights? This is more controversial, and less-developed. David Friedman gave me a paper he's done on this..."Schelling points" are a Schelling point between us, as it were. Part II will get into this briefly. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Brute-forcing DES
by pjn＠nworks.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Any one up for a distributed brute force attack on single DES? My > back-of-the-envelope calculations and guesstimates put this on the > hairy edge of doability (the critical factor is how many machines can > be recruited - a non-trivial cash prize would help). >> Count me in. I've got a couple of net-connected Pentiums that are >> mostly idle. Although I dont have a pentium, I would be glad to put forth some computer power to help. >> Might be able to bring some money in by selling "I Helped Crack DES >> And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt" T-shirts. Id buy one! :) P.J. pjn(a)nworks.com ... I helped crack DES and all I got was this lousy Tagline. ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]

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Question
by pjn＠nworks.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

OK...A question for you all: If it is illegal (by our governments standards...) to export programs like PGP, etc., and you can send the whole source code in a message because that is also considered illegal, then could you send the code, broken up into many pieces, and send THAT in Email, would that be illegal? (Wow...All in one sentence... :) P.J. pjn(a)nworks.com ... I am Jesus of Borg. Blessed are they who are assimilated. ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]

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M$NBC covers "Fear of a Hack Planet" and "Hate Goes Online"
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At the risk of giving M$NBC more attention than it deserves... BillG's latest misadventure editorializes on free/hate speech tonight at 7 and 10pm. Current and past fluffage at http://www.thesite.com/cgi/worl.cgi There's also a blank message area for "Would you bank through your computer? Do you think the technology is secure enough?" but no story. Maybe that's tomorrow. - -rich http://www.c2.org/~rich/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMfUvjpNcNyVVy0jxAQF9pgH/cYKc2FlkNt9xD1MFXHnMg9tshZsVqKjW O7ZYEyDOxutgBTgNoDkW2VA1FqkKioqxDGjurvUJmuvRGBu3E2GOfA== =bFqb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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